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So I guess everyone below is concentrating on whether it's 14/3 or 3/14 or whatever instead of realizing that today is ALSO another special holiday: Steak and a Blowjob Day! http://www.steakandbjday.com/ [steakandbjday.com] I guess they'll find out when they're done arguing over semantics.

The reason why date representations suck so much is partially inherent, and partially human-created.

The inherent part: There are at least 4 naturally occurring measurements of time that have been used as the basis - the day, the month, the year, and the second (measured via an atomic clock). None of them can be fully defined in terms of the others.

The human-created part: Differing base systems for each piece of the time that we tried to create. While the 12-13 months per year and the 365.25... days per year

One of the reasons the French calendar failed was that it only allowed for one day off in 10. If they had gone with a five-day week (still evenly divides into a 30-day month), with one day off each week, the people of France probably would've accepted it more readily.

Kind of ironic considering the French now have three days off in seven....

That's a tough case to argue, given that the standards originally developed by the French have been the international and scientific norm for a very very long time. The Revolutionary calendar has its faults, but it's a significant improvement over the Gregorian calendar with all its inconsistencies and references to long-dead political squabbles.

"Which day?" without the month ends up making one scramble for context.

And here's me thinking that most people, when given a day, will assume that you mean either the current month, or the next if that day has already passed.
Using your logic, you're telling us that somebody saying "Fancy going to the cinema on Saturday?" would only serve to confuse people as they would then wonder what week you're talking about.

Candy and soda? Why? I let my students bring in as much pie as they want, and we share it around the class. Usually, we also pull out the string and the rulers, and we see who can calculate the closest value for pi from their pie. And if they're lucky, they get a special lecture from me on the historical importance of the value of pi. And pie.

Of course, nothing stops me from doing that at other times in the semester, either. I love pie!:)

So did you have a point with this, or is it just to be an asshole? On what day do you celebrate mathematicians? 3.14159 is drilled into scientist heads from day 1. 22/7 is a uniquely rough approximation used by creationists and other types who cannot get through their heads that irrational numbers exist. But the 22/7 thing is NOT American, and 3/14 IS, so that by definition self-justifies, if only because anything anti-American is intrinsically good.

Pi day always reminds me of one of my favorite examples of legislative lunacy, the almost-successful attempt by the Indiana state legislature to set the value(s) of Pi by statute.
The story, from Cecil Adams's "The Straight Dope" [straightdope.com]
I particularly liked Prof. Waldo's response, when he was invited to meet the originator of this bill.

It comes from saying "March 14, 2011" in formal writing and oral communication. 3/14/11 is an informal abbreviation of that, and is in that order because it comports with how the formal, unabbreviated version is written. In other words, the purpose for which dates were abbreviated results in the manner in which they were abbreviated. Computerized sorting by date was not a consideration when this date format came into standard use.

I don't know why we say "March 14, 2011" instead of "14 March, 2011", but a

You don't support your sorting argument very well, when you mention 22/7.

Taking a string and reversing it and then sorting it will not achieve your desired sort order (i.e. taking strings holding dates such as "22/7/2011" or "22/7"). "22/7/2011" in reverse is "1102/7/22". "30/12/2009" in reverse is "9002/21/03". So all the dates from 2009 will be after all the year 2011 dates. Years will be all confused. Ten's place of day-of-month is to the left of the one's place. There are so many issues with this, y